The shop keeper's wife, a handicapped woman after working lifelong for her husband at their street corner shop dies from husband's neglect.

The Fate of Shop Keeper's Wife
Subba Rao
Before the school opens in the morning and again during the
lunch break, the students from the high school gather under a large
Plumeria tree with red and white flowers emitting sweet fragrance stood
diagonally across the school gate at the corner of the cross roads. At
each corner was a small shop, a wooden kiosk standing on four legs.
All the four shops competed for business in selling sodas, biscuits,
snacks and bananas. They also sold sundry items like soaps, oils,
beauty products and medications for simple ailments. Cigarettes of all
brands were exhibited in a special glass showcase behind the counter.
The school building was a rental property of a wealthy
physician who lived in a large gated mansion on an elevated ground
behind the school. Every day morning, the physician and his young
doctor son left for their clinic few miles away in their chauffeur
driven silver colored car. In the morning the Physician's chauffeur, a
grey haired man in khaki uniform rode his bike to the foot of the steep
hill and then pushed his old bicycle with great effort to reach the
large metal gate that led to the doctor's mansion. Juggernaut waiting
for the bell to ring for the start of the school, watched the chauffeur
every morning pushing his old bicycle to the top of the road. On
occasions, the doctor, a chubby fair skin bald head man and his tall
slender son with a long nose stood outside their mansion gate waiting
for their chauffeur if he were to be late for the duty. Juggernaut
wondered why the doctor's son doesn't drive his father to the clinic.
On the opposite side of the street were red tiled-roof houses
built on terraces with steep concrete steps built in between as a walk-
way to the houses on either side. On the top of the hill was a large
multi storied yellow building. Juggernaut always wondered about people
living in that house since they have to walk a long way on steep steps
to reach their home. At the road level, a small sign board on the wall
of one of the houses read Type Writing and Stenography Taught Here. The
instructor was a middle aged man in glasses. He always wore white shirt
and white trousers. In the afternoons when the school was dismissed
Juggernaut coming out of the school yard always crisscrossed the
stenography instructor struggling to climb the steps to his house. He
was a habitual drinker and got drunk on the way home from the work.
Sometimes his wife or his son used to come out to help him walk to
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